Ashre - Text

Text

The majority of Ashrei is Psalm 145 in full. Psalm 145 is composed of 21 verses, each starting with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet arranged alphabetically. This makes Ashrei easy to memorize. The only Hebrew letter that does not begin a verse of Psalm 145 is nun (נ).

The first two verses are from Psalms 84:5 and Psalms 144:15 respectively. The final verse is Psalm 115:18. The Rome liturgy adds to this Psalm 119:1 and the Mahzor Vitry (12th century) adds four (possibly five) other verses beginning with the same word ("Ashrei")(namely Psalms 119:1-2, 84:6, 112:1, and 89:16), and it appears that originally the general practice was to have more introductory verses than the two now used by Ashkenazic and Sefardic Jews.

Introductory verse: Psalm 84:5: It is customary for the congregants to be seated while reciting Ashrei, as the introductory verse, "Happy are the people who dwell in Your house", describes the congregants as part of the household, not strangers or mere visitors, so they sit to demonstrate that connection. The word ישב (yashav), here translated as "dwell" -- also means "sit down" (as in Exodus 17:12, First Kings 2:12, and Psalm 122:5), so the Talmud also suggests that this verse describes people sitting (b. Beracoth 32b).

Verse 7 (ז): It has been noticed that, while the majority of Hebrew Bibles spell the first word of this verse with a long vowel - זֵכֶר (zaykher), many prayerbooks print this word with a short vowel - זֶכֶר (zekher) -- the two variants being described as "five dots" and "six dots" respectively. There is no difference in meaning, both variants mean the same thing, a "remembrance" or a "reminder", and both occur elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, although the long vowel form occurs more often. The short vowel (six dots) reading does appear in this verse in several important early editions of the Hebrew Bible, such as the first four editions of the complete Hebrew Bible, and the Complutensian Polyglot and the First Rabbinic Bible (by Pratensis). But the long vowel (five dots) reading is found in virtually all the more recent and more authoritative editions, including the Aleppo Codex, the Leningrad Codex, the Second Rabbinic Bible (by Ben-Hayyim), the Letteris edition, the Ginsburg editions, the Koren edition, the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, etc. Siddurim that carry the short vowel reading include, among others, the widely used ArtScroll Siddur (although the ArtScroll editions of the Bible and of the Psalms have here the long vowel reading). It would appear that prayerbook quotations of the Bible are sometimes copied as they appeared in earlier prayerbooks, without doublechecking the Bible itself (a similar effect has been noticed in the 19th and 20th century editions of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, which perpetuated quotations from the Bishops' Bible instead of using the wording of the King James Version).

Verse 13 (מ ... and נ). Psalm 145 is an alphabetic acrostic, each line beginning with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet -- except that there is no line beginning with the letter nun (נ). This is discussed at greater length in the Wikipedia article on Psalm 145. Although the Septuagint and some other non-Massoretic versions of the Bible have such a line, no Jewish prayerbook inserts a line beginning with nun.

Verse 16 (פ). "You open Your hand ..." This is a most important verse and the universal practice is that it must be said with much concentration on its meaning and with sincerity. In the weekday morning services, especially among Ashkenazim, when the worshippers are wearing their tefillin, it is common reverently to touch the arm tefillin during the first half of the verse ("Your hand") and then the head tefillin during the second half ("its desire"). At other times, when tefillin are not worn, in addition to the concentration on the meaning of the verse, it is a custom (primarily Mizrahi but also practiced by others) to lift up one's upturned hands as if to receive God's gifts.